Old Faces, New Places: Free Agent Risers

May 28, 2021

Antonio Losada identifies four NFL free agents on new teams in 2021 that could be fantasy football risers and undervalued draft targets based on ADP.

There is no way to describe the average NFL front office. Each franchise has its own set of rules, follows different parameters when evaluating players, and builds its roster in a very particular way. Even with a clear mindset, an organization's principles might be tweaked in order to accommodate players into the salary cap, for example, which makes decisions even harder to take and for us to understand in some cases.

No matter what, every offseason we see the same musical chairs game. As the title of this column says, old and known faces always move to new places, whether because they find no love in their last team anymore, or because they're truly coveted by every other team around the league and paid big bucks to go play for other franchise. This doesn't mean those changes are always good, or bad, as each move is a case to study on its own with multiple potential ramifications.

For fantasy football purposes, it is easy to try and predict whether those moves fall on the "positive" or "negative" side of things. That is what I'll be writing about next, highlighting four players that didn't generate much noise during the 2020 season but that, after changing teams during the past few months, are poised to improve their fantasy football production in their new surroundings.

Fantasy Points Projections

RB Tevin Coleman, New York Jets

You were not expecting Coleman right here, were you? Well, the truth is that he did the right thing and moved on from San Francisco to join the New York Jets on the east coast. First of all, Tevin missed half the year and played only eight games for the 49ers. That's why I'm not looking at total PPR projections, but rather at the FPPG average for 2021 compared to last season. And that's where Coleman leads the pack of players expected to break the 100-FP mark this upcoming year with a 6.4+ improvement on FPPG as a Jet.

Makes sense. The Jets ponied up a fourth-rounder to get themselves some insurance at the running back position by drafting North Carolina's product Michael Carter. At this point in the offseason, though, the pecking order seems to read RB1 Coleman, RB2 Carter. Oh, and that's not to mention the presence of Ty Johnson, who could also eat from the rookie's opportunities.

Coleman's 2020 was forgettable, but in the right situation--New York's, that is--he has enough juice to be the leading tailback of his team. The vet had played at least 12 games in every season prior to the last one, including getting 149 touches in all of them except his rookie year (89). He finished as an RB2 three seasons in a row in his last three years in Atlanta before getting to San Fran, and he projects to an RB3 finish next season in New York. Quite a value given his super-low 196 ADP (RB56).

TE Gerald Everett, Seattle Seahawks

We saw kind of a committee, or at least a split, in Los Angeles as the Rams handed a very leveled number of targets to both TE Gerald Everett (62 in 16 games) and Tyler Higbee (60 in 15 games). That was always going to be a fantasy-upside killer, obviously, but even on that time-share, both players finished in the TE2 cohort with 128.2 PPR points (Higbee) and 92.9 (Everett) by season's end. Now, Higbee will stay as the TE1 in LA while Everett will do so for Seattle after signing with the Seahawks.

Seattle doesn't scream fantasy heaven, I know, but the other options for the Seahawks at the position are middling at best. Greg Olsen is retired, Jacob Hollister left in free agency, and Will Dissly finally played a full season in 2020. If Everett is not the TE1 of this team, then I don't even know.

Gerald Everett is the only TE to change teams this offseason that projects to score more than 100 PPR points while raising his FPPG from last year. Only Jonnu Smith/Hunter Henry project to a higher PPR tally, but both are expected to lose on the FPPG department as they'll eat from each other in New England. Everett's ADP is at around 135 right now and given his clear path toward a no. 1 role that makes sense to snatch him with a late-rounder if you punt on the top-tier TEs earlier in your draft. PFF has Everett projected to 116+ PPR points and a 6.8 FPPG average on the year.

WR Kenny Golladay, New York Giants

This is a very personal take on Golladay's upside now that he's part of Big Blue. If you see this signing as a hit on Golladay's upside, I guess I'd get it. The Giants have a packed receiving corps, are welcoming back RB Saquon Barkley, and you might think about that as an overall bad-impact environment for Golladay because of a questionable passing game. But that also means he will be playing for a team that defenses will struggle to stop on a weekly basis, and he will undoubtedly be the no. 1 option for New York at the WR spot.

Golladay is entering his fifth season as a pro at age 28 and only last season did he miss more than five games in a single season. That was definitely a low blow for a lowly Lions squad that had no answer to losing him. But in the time he was available, Golladay thrived and put up 13.2 FPPG in five games (if we don't count the last game he played in, which he left after just 18 snaps, he would have put up an even better 16.5 FPPG in four games), pretty much on par with the prior two seasons (13.8 and 15.5) in which he finished as WR21 (2018) and WR9 (2019).

In the two full-time seasons, he played prior to that injury-derailed 2020 year, Golladay averaged a 170-67-1,126-8 season-line playing under Matthew Stafford/Jeff Driskel/David Blough. Daniel Jones is waiting in New York, which again, you might have different views on depending on how you rate the third-year QB. Anyway, fantasy GMs are licking their chops with Golladay's future in the Big Apple as his ADP of 64 is already high (and getting higher) and PFF has him projected to 238+ PPR points and a WR16 finish on the year assuming he plays all 17 games. They have a 119-70-1,270-7 projected line attached to his name, in line with his career-long numbers.

WR Breshad Perriman, Detroit Lions

Interestingly enough, New York kind of flipped Kenny Golladay by now former-Jet Breshad Perriman, who went the other way to Detroit this past free agency. The profiles of those two are rather similar, with Perriman averaging a 15.2 aDOT and Golladay sitting at 14.7 yards. Obviously, it'd be a little disingenuous to compare these two abilities and production overall, but that might change with Perriman catching balls from QB Jared Goff instead of Sam Darnold in 2021.

Perriman's traits, as you can see in the pic above, don't leave a lot open to imagination. He's fast as hell, runs deep routes, plays on the outside, and gets a ton of deep targets and yards per reception because he's often catching passes down the field. Just peep at the top comps and names such as Mike Williams, Tee Higgins, and Chase Claypool pop up. I'm not saying he could be a top-tier deep-field guy, but...

...the Lions receiving corps will feature Perriman, Tyrell Williams, Quintez Cephus, and rookie Amon-Ra St. Brown in 2021. If you don't think Perriman is at least the WR2 of that group, you're probably wrong. Perriman projects to 147+ FP in 2021, the sixth-highest mark among WRs changing places, and is one of only three receivers to have a slight improvement on projected FPPG from 2020 to next season. You shouldn't spend more than a last-round flier in Perriman, but he should be on your radar as a potential FLEX option with upside for more as the potential leader of Detroit's offense.

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